The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe

what they talked about on the journey. I imagine that they said nothing at all. Beatrix was still crying, in any case.
    I did not see her again for some time after that. There was a long interval, too, before her next letter, which contained no reference to this episode, or to Bonaparte. The dog was never found again. Once, walking through Bournville hand in hand with my mother, on the way to the dentist, I passed a man walking a dog who looked exactly like him. My mother thought so too: we both stopped and turned and stared, and the man turned and stared back, puzzled and a little indignant. But we were not brave enough to confront him.
    This photograph brings it all back. And yet sometimes, the images we remember, the ones we carry inside our heads, can be more vivid than anything a camera is able to preserve on film. If I lay down this photograph, now, and close my eyes, what I see at once is not darkness but the memory of Beatrix, just before she began to run after that dog: silhouetted against the winter sky, her little vulnerable figure, black against white, standing motionless on the ridge between those two rows of chestnut trees, her back to me, looking into the distance, her gaze pitched towards the horizon, to the point where that foolish, annoying little animal was about to disappear from view. A silhouette, that’s all, the outline of a human shape, and yet to me it is as expressive as if I were staring Beatrix in the face: in the tense, wired attitude of her body I can see all her despair, all her terrible sense of loss, all her horror at the thought of what awaited her when we returned to the house and told her mother the news. She had stood there, rooted, for I don’t know how long – paralysed by all of these things. Just for a few seconds, I suppose, but how clearly I can still see her. The image is burned, burned on my consciousness. It has never left me, and I can be certain now that it never will.
    Beatrix’s wedding was a rather subdued affair, as I think this next picture illustrates.
    We are up to number six, now, aren’t we? And back at Warden Farm again.
    A group of eight people, photographed once again in black and white, standing outside the front door. On the far left of the picture is a short, fair-haired man whose name for the life of me I can’t remember: he was the best man. Then you have the groom’s parents: similarly, their names are lost to me, long since lost. Then the groom himself: Roger, standing arm in arm with Beatrix. Next to her, Ivy, of course, and Uncle Owen. And last of all, to the far right of the picture – myself, the proud bridesmaid. I am fifteen years old, and the year is 1948. Late spring or early summer, if I remember correctly.
    Beatrix herself was eighteen now. Far too young to marry, as I’m sure you will agree. Needless to say, she was pregnant. Why else would she have got married, at that age, to someone as obviously unsuitable as Roger?
    Let me look at him more closely, so that I can describe him to you. He is not so much smiling at the camera as glowering – that is the first thing you notice. I would say, from my brief acquaintance with him, that this was his habitual expression. He was an unsmiling sort of person. Whether this reflected his general outlook on life, or merely his feelings upon finding himself married to Beatrix, and the father of her child, I would not presume to say. To be tied down to a place you do not like, at a young age, to be married to someone you don’t love, and to believe that the remainder of your life will consist of efforts to provide for her and the children you do not want, would be enough to make anybody scowl, or so I would have thought. Anyway, in this picture he is scowling. His hair is cut short, and has been brushed and stiffened so that it stands upright – a bit like Stan Laurel’s. His morning suit is a good cut, and a good fit – he was a well-built, athletic man: nice-looking, too, there is no denying